Over the past couple of months, I've been getting a number of emails asking me about SkyOS' status. Since I didn't know anything beyond what's on the SkyOS website, and because, well, I have no affiliation with SkyOS, I couldn't really reply to these emails. However, after yet another email sent to me late last week, I decided to simply... Email Robert Szeleney, the man behind the project.

So I'm really not sure what the point your trying to make here - aside trying to devalue the hard work of a fellow
developer based on nothing more than prejudice.

I don't buy his claims. He doesn't exactly have shining credibility at this point. Do you realize that the paid beta testers were promised a final version?
The reason that we decided to require a small fee is basically to cover costs and also to provide some extra funding to our project. The $30 fee is actually the same price as retail price of the SkyOS 5.0 Final release. So you can either pay $30 when SkyOS 5.0 Final is released, or you can pay it now, receive a beta copy of 5.0 to test, have access to the beta forums to get your questions answered personally, and then also have SkyOS 5.0 Final shipped to you when it is ready. You really are not paying anything extra, but you are receiving much more.http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=154

I called it vapor-ware, I was right, now I'm the prick for not believing that all his code was original? I'm not the one who took $30 from people with a promise of a final version.

I don't buy his claims. He doesn't exactly have shining credibility at this point. Do you realize that the paid beta testers were promised a final version?

The reason that we decided to require a small fee is basically to cover costs and also to provide some extra funding to our project. The $30 fee is actually the same price as retail price of the SkyOS 5.0 Final release. So you can either pay $30 when SkyOS 5.0 Final is released, or you can pay it now, receive a beta copy of 5.0 to test, have access to the beta forums to get your questions answered personally, and then also have SkyOS 5.0 Final shipped to you when it is ready. You really are not paying anything extra, but you are receiving much more. http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=154

I called it vapor-ware, I was right, now I'm the prick for not believing that all his code was original? I'm not the one who took $30 from people with a promise of a final version.

You can't use one unrelated fact to prove another.
While you have a point about the fee (a point I'd already made in this topic), it has nothing to do with the source code that may or may not have been stolen.

at the moment you're still trying to justify your own prejudice.
So what if you were right about the vaporware - I think it was obvious to most people that SkyOS was never going to get far beyond beta. But then few hobbyist OSs do.